Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

At the dawn of the twentieth century mainline Protestant denominations, broadly evangelical in their emphasis on personal experience and conversion, dominated American religious life, even though for half a century Roman Catholics had constituted the largest single religious body in the nation. Until World War I disrupted the pattern of over three decades, immigration had been swelling the ranks of Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Judaism. By the middle of the twentieth century Protestantism, Catholicism, and Judaism seemed to have become functionally equivalent in providing a socially acceptable religious identity ( Herberg 1960 ). By the twenty-first century a more expansive pluralism had become entrenched, however. Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism had become commonplace in the nation's cities; and home-grown religions such as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons) were growing faster than any mainline group. What illuminates American religious life in the twentieth century is the changing influence of mainline Protestant demoninations as the basic structure of American religion; a more diffuse pluralism became the norm. Movements transcending denominational boundaries have remained vital to American religious culture. One dynamic instance has been fundamentalism; another is Pentecostalism. Both were embryonic at the start of the century, when most denominational ... log in or subscribe to read full text